Kakani Day Hike

Trip Overview:

Kakani is a hill station on the northern side of Kathmandu. It is in Nuwakot district, 29km away from Kathmandu and is accessible by road. The drive takes just 1 and half hour. The place is famous for its breathtaking scenery and a lot of potential for day hiking- and if you are interested you can extend your hikes to a number of days!

"It is interesting how beautiful the views of high mountains and the low-land villages appear from Kakani. Many people on a day hike to Kakani want to extend their stay by a day or two."

After breakfast, we drive 29 kms north of Kathmandu to Kakani. The drive itself is interesting as we get past numerous villages negotiating the road that seems to have never ending bends. The scenery on the way is magnificent. But the thing of true beauty is saved for the moment we arrive in Kakani - the whole vista just opens up on the north side as we get off our vehicle. To the north are some of the world's highest mountains including Manaslu, Annapurna, Ganesh Himal, Gaurishankar and many (yes many mountains).

From the main view point, there are a lot of interesting hikes possible towards north-east. There is also a century old summer villa used by the British Embassy a long ago as well as the memorial park that commemorates the victims of 1992 Thai Airways Flight 311 accident.

If we are there between February to April, we will see local people selling fresh strawberries. Trust us, their strawberries are best in the world.

We start our hike from Kakani, walk past dense forests and continue via Alle to finally end our hike at Budhanilkantha. It is a really good hike of 5 to 6 hrs. But we can take more time to rest and take photographs to enjoy on our own style.

This is how the day will be like -

07:00 AM - Breakfast at Hotel

07:30 - Pickup at Hotel, drive to Kakani (29 kms, 1 hr 30 minutes)

09:00 - Arrive in Kakani

Local hikes and stop for lunch

17:00 - Finish hike at Budhanilkantha, Drive back to Kathmandu.